News

Small NYC homeowners are facing hefty fines for short-term rentals The crackdown has swept up one- and two-family homes

Small homeowners swept up in the city’s aggressive enforcement of short-term rentals, like Airbnb, are getting hit with steep fines.

Owners of one- and two-family homes in Brooklyn have been issued more than $2.1 million in fines under the de Blasio administration, The City reported. That’s 27 percent of the total $7.8 million in fines issued in the borough during that period.

Homeowners in Queens paid a larger share: $1.7 million in penalties made up 39 percent of the borough’s total $4.3 million. In Manhattan, where one- and two-family homes are harder to come by, they made up less than 1 percent of the $16.2 million in fines issued for illegal rentals since 2014.

Dian Killian is among the homeowners who’ve been penalized. She told The City she had researched the legality of renting out her unit in Bedford-Stuyvesant. State laws prohibiting rentals of less than 30 days do not apply to one- and two-family homes.

Still, she was approached by inspectors and hit with four buildings violations by the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement. Killian eventually paid more than $5,000 in fines — which she said amounted to about three months of rentals.

Newly elected Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said the proportion of fines hitting small homeowners contradicts what the administration has said about enforcement targeting the more egregious offenders. In July 2018, Council Speaker Corey Johnson said city inspectors “are really trying to go after the really bad actors that have entire buildings or multiple apartments in a building.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio previously told NY1 that “my problem is when a building is turned into a de facto hotel. My problem is when an apartment is rented out effectively year round.”

Both officials have sought tighter regulation.

“We were clear our intent is not to go after one- and two-family homeowners,” Williams told The City. “We thought we had a partnership with the city. But the administration looks like they’ve opened up a can of wild, wild west whoop-ass on them.”

City officials say their enforcement is complaint-driven, and that there are cases where one- and two-family homes had been turned into de facto boarding houses or where Airbnb had struggled to self-police violations of the rules. [The City] — Meenal Vamburkar

Original Article

Connecting The Dots

Dalai Lama witchcraft protecting Al Sharpton

How is Al Sharpton — the Jussie Smollett of civil rights — still a kingmaker?

This week, nearly every single Democratic candidate for president — save the otherwise-distracted Joe Biden — has or will appear at Sharpton’s annual convention for his National Action Network, which he calls a charity.

A more rational observer might call it a personal piggybank funded by shakedowns.

This is a man who, as The Post exclusively reportedin December, sold the rights to his life story to his own “nonprofit,” paying himself $531,000 — on top of his $244,661 salary to run NAN in 2017.

When asked by The Post when he would see that half-million, Sharpton — who was covering the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth in South Africa for MSNBC, itself a sacrilege — took offense.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked.

Such is Al Sharpton’s M.O., one that’s kept him in public life for over 30 years: dodge, deflect, deny, distract — and then cry racism. Sound extreme? It’s a practice that has kept major American corporations donating to NAN rather than deal with Sharpton’s poisonous accusations. McDonald’s, Pfizer, Verizon, AT&T, General Motors, American Honda, Chrysler, Macy’s, Anheuser-Busch and Colgate-Palmolive have all paid to keep Sharpton quiet.

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly donated $110,000 throughout his term in office, and Sharpton, who historically loved nothing more than to point his megaphone at City Hall and inflame racial tensions, finally shut up.

“Once Sharpton’s on board, he plays the race card all the way through,” a source told The Post in 2015. “He just keeps asking for more and more money.”

One of the great mysteries of modern American history is how Sharpton ever survived Tawana Brawley. For those too young to remember, in 1987, Brawley, then 15, was discovered wrapped in a garbage bag, smeared with human waste and racist epithets written in charcoal. She claimed that she had been gang raped in the woods in upstate New York by six white men, including then-Dutchess County prosecutor Steven Pagones.

Sharpton was Brawley’s greatest supporter, even as it was revealed she made the whole thing up, even as she and he were ordered to pay restitution to Pagones, whose life and reputation were ruined.

It was an order both, of course, tried to shirk. (Sharpton’s fee was eventually paid by supporters.)

SEE ALSO

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will speak at Al Sharpton’s convention

In ‘80s and ‘90s New York, when race relations were dismal at best, dangerous at worst, Al Sharpton sought to instigate and agitate rather than calm. Even as he later became a buffoon, one of those only-in-New York characters with his bouffant and his medallion, wearing athletic suits even as he was morbidly obese, “Al Charlatan” to Ed Koch, he indefatigably reinvented himself. He dropped the weight, bought a briefcase.

He wrote a book, ran for president, aligned himself with the Dalai Lama.

We knew, as he surely did, that it was still all a big con, an entertaining sideshow. And really, it still is. Who in today’s America finds Al Sharpton politically and racially relevant? Who can recall the last thing Al Sharpton did for someone not named Al Sharpton?

On Friday, every candidate from Kamala Harris to Elizabeth Warren to Bernie Sanders will nonetheless kiss the ring, as Beto O’Rourke did on Wednesday afternoon. Beto pulled a cynical 180-degree turn on his former opposition to reparations. In other words, he was against it just last month before he was “absolutely” for it today — perfect funhouse logic for the political theater of Reverend Al.

New York Post Original Article

Uncategorized

1st black woman and 1st openly gay person elected mayor in Chicago

Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot defeated Toni Preckwinkle in a runoff for Chicago mayor Tuesday. She will be the first openly gay person and first black woman to lead the city.

The Associated Press called the race for Lightfoot shortly before 8 p.m. local time.

With over 91 percent of precincts in, Lightfoot led Preckwinkle 73.7 percent to 26.3 percent, according to the Chicago board of elections website.

Lightfoot pumped her fist in the air and the crowd cheered when she said, “Thank you Chicago!”

“In this election Toni and I were competitors, but our differences are nothing compared to what we can achieve together,” Lightfoot said. “Now that it’s over, I know we will work together for the city that we both love.”

“Today, you did more than make history,” Lightfoot said. “You created a movement for change.”

Uncategorized

Sodomite Mayor running for President thinks Trump doesn’t know God

Presidential candidate and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg said during his interview with USA Today that it is hard to look at the actions of President Donald Trump and think he believes in God.

“I’m reluctant to comment on another person’s faith, but I would say it is hard to look at this president’s actions and believe that they’re the actions of somebody who believes in God,” Buttigieg said.

“I just don’t understand how you can be as worshipful of your own self as he is and be prepared to humble yourself before God. I’ve never seen him humble himself before anyone. And the exaltation of yourself, especially a self that’s about wealth and power, could not be more at odds with at least my understanding of the teachings of the Christian faith,” he added.

He also criticized conservatives  “saying so much about what Christ said so little about, and so little about what he said so much about,” like how the issue of abortion has become a litmus test.

During an interview with The Washington Post, he also criticized Democrats for their tendencies to shun religion.

“I think it’s unfortunate [the Democratic Party] has lost touch with a religious tradition that I think can help explain and relate our values,” the Navy veteran said. “At least in my interpretation, it helps to root [in religion] a lot of what it is we do believe in when it comes to protecting the sick and the stranger and the poor, as well as skepticism of the wealthy and the powerful and the established.”

News

New York’s new budget is all about bleeding the public

Link

New York woke Sunday to learn that state lawmakers had agreed to a budget that aims to spend a whopping $175 billion in the next fiscal year, while imposing a boatload of new taxes and fees in the name of funding the MTA.

More hits to your pocket, and more spending, are still to come: The budget also sets up “independent” commissions to settle the details of both public funding of state political campaigns and “congestion” tolls in Manhattan. Plus, lawmakers this year may yet legalize online sports betting and the sale of pot, each of which will come with a hefty cut of the profits for state government.

The only good news: Lawmakers agreed to make permanent the law capping property-tax hikes (which doesn’t apply in the city). It will no longer be linked to renewal of the rent-control laws.
But the rent laws are being tightened, and some city real-estate taxes are headed up: The budget adds new “mansion” taxes on the sale of multimillion-dollar homes — while reserving the revenue for state priorities, even though property taxes traditionally fund local government.

Mansion-tax supporters usually point to billionaire hedge-funder Ken Griffin’s $238 million January purchase of a penthouse off Central Park, the most expensive home in America, as evidence of excess that deserves special taxation — especially since Griffin’s Citadel fund is Chicago-based. What they don’t mention is that Citadel was expanding operations in the city, and even considering a move to the Big Apple — which would have added lots of high-paying (and so big-tax-generating) jobs to the local economy.

Except that Griffin publicly called off those plans more recently, citing New York politicians’ clear intent to “soak the rich” no matter how many jobs it destroys.

‘Congestion pricing” is another state grab of fees generated in New York City, from a city resource (its roads). Yes, the funds are supposed to go to the MTA, but suburban lawmakers have won guarantees that some of the windfall will go to the commuter railroads rather than the subways and buses. And, significantly, the money will count as part of the state’s share of MTA funding, with the city forced to cough up still more cash for its contribution. (Mayor de Blasio, his eyes on his future job prospects rather than the city’s interests, went along happily with this naked cash grab.)

The same gimmick applies to revenue raised from “improved” (that is, harder-hitting) taxes on Internet sales: Money raised from the city will go toward the state’s share of MTA funding. In the rest of the state, that cash goes to the local government — though the budget also cuts other state payments to local government on the grounds that Internet taxes will replace it.

Gov. Cuomo claims that the congestion, Internet and “mansion” revenue will fund up to $25 billion in MTA capital spending. But that means bonding out the income for 30 or 40 years — and leaves the MTA at risk of having to make bond payments if the revenue streams prove less lucrative than expected. So this gimmick adds new risks of even steeper fare hikes down the line, even as it means the state will have to look at yet new income sources (most likely, yet more tax hikes) to fund future five-year MTA capital plans.

SEE ALSO

Even New York’s millionaires are fleeing to less expensive cities

Meanwhile, the budget’s supposed MTA reforms are thin gruel (other than a sensible requirement for outside vetting of major-project proposals, which might prevent future white elephants like the East Side Access project). Nearly all the “reforms” are to start in future years, and are left to the MTA itself to accomplish.

Utterly absent is any effort to reform the agency’s labor relations, even though pay and benefits are by far the largest, and fastest-rising, part of the MTA budget.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie calls this “a budget where we were scrimping and saving, trying to find pennies in the couch.” In truth, all the ingenuity went into picking the pockets of the public, and of local governments, to spend nearly $9,000 for every man, woman and child in the state.

All this, without setting aside anything like a prudent amount of rainy-day funds. Which means Cuomo, Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins also just laid the groundwork for far broader tax hikes when a recession inevitably hits.

And possibly even without a recession: Ken Griffin’s decision not to bring his business here follows Amazon’s abandonment of its NYC expansion plan, which the company likewise blamed on New York politicians’ greed and hostility to business.

In the long run, bleeding the golden goose can only lead to doom.

Original article link

Justice, News

Calls to Investigate Tina Tchen, former Michelle Obama aide, Over Texts to Jussie Smollett Prosecuter

There have been calls to investigate texts that were sent by former Michelle Obama aide to the Prosecutor in the Jussie Smollett case.

Tchen, a friend of the Smollett family, contacted prosecutors early in the case saying the family were not happy with how the case was progressing. However, after it emerged that Smollett had falsely accused the two men of hate crimes against him, and the charges against Smollett were suddenly dropped; there have been calls to investigate Tchen’s full involvement in the case.

Read More: CNN

News

Trump’s Recognition that Golan Heights is Israeli; Has God Raised up Trump to be a Queen Esther

This week President Trump signed an agreement which recognises the Golan Heights are Israeli territory. For years the region has been disputed and fought over. Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu called the announcement a “Purim miracle”, falling as it did during the Jewish festival of Purim. This has lead to comparisons being drawn between President Trump and Queen Esther of the Bible.

When asked about the comparison in an interview, with CBN, Secretary of State Pompeo suggested that God could have sent Trump to help save Israel.

Read More: NBC News   CBN   Fox News

 

News

Rush Limbaugh Wants Trump to Appoint Special Council to Investigate Collusion Hoax

Conservative radio presenter, Rush Limbaugh, has called for President Trump to call a Special Council to investigate the origins of the Mueller Report. Limbaugh has called for this action as many liberal politicians are still not satisfied with the findings of the Mueller Report. The report, which was set up, to investigate whether the President had colluded with Russia during the 2016 Presidential Elections, found that there was no evidence of collusion.

Read More: Breitbart

News

UK Parliament Fail to reach any deal on Brexit.

The British Parliament  have had what called “the final decisive” vote on Brexit. With the results in no one option has gained a majority. British politics remains in a state of turmoil as the majority of MPs do not support leaving the EU; but the British people having voted in a referendum to leave the EU: the deadlock continues.

Read More: BBC

 

 

Politics

Hungary’s Pariament Refuse Be Bullied into Soros’s Globalist Agenda

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has said his country will not be bullied by the EU into accepting new legislation being discussed that will see the EU budget tripled, in order to fund Third World mass immigration into Europe.

Prime Minister Orban told Hungarian media: “They are not going to decide in Brussels among the various left-leaning or leftward drifting parties or in the offices of the so-called civic organizations of George Soros what is going to happen in Hungary and in Europe,”

Read More: Breitbart

Connecting The Dots, Corruption, Education, Perversion

Democrats Introduce Equality Act to Cement a Perverse world view and Ideology into Federal Law and your children and future generations

House Democrats introduced the Equality Act last week, a measure that would ensure gender ideology — i.e., transgender bathrooms, forced preferred pronoun use, and biological men playing women’s sports, etc. — is cemented into federal law.

H.R. 5, which was introduced with 239 co-sponsors, states its purpose is to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and for other purposes.”

…In fact, the measure would likely force American women throughout the country to relinquish their rights to privacy, safety, and the ability to compete in sports “equally.”

…“it actually would promote inequality by elevating the ideologies of special-interest groups to the level of protected groups in civil rights law.”

…“if the Equality Act passes, gender identity ideology will be taught via the law, and its punitive power will ensure your compliance”:

The Equality Act has the support of at least 161 major corporations, all of which are listed on the website of Hands Across the Aisle.

Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted his support for the Equality Act:

Hands Across the Aisle responded the Equality Act is a “direct attack on women and girls”:

In the era of #MeToo, it’s hard to understand why these companies are willing to endanger women and girls by acting so deliberately to undermine the nation’s indecent exposure and voyeurism restrictions, in what are supposed to be single-sex accommodations. Is it any wonder that many of them have recently faced significant sexual harassment allegations, or had large bias or sexual harassment claims brought against them?

…a forced gender ideology at the federal level would be a nightmare for American women, many who, at this point in time, now take for granted the equal educational opportunities they regularly enjoy.

“If gender-identity ideology becomes the law of the land, women in all walks of life will suffer the consequences of the blatantly sexist notion that a man who adopts stereotypical feminine roles, behaviors or clothing must be treated in all respects as a woman,” Waggoner warned in an op-ed at the Hill. “Contrary to the gender identity advocates who are pushing the act, being female is not about wearing dresses, adopting other feminine stereotypes, or ‘feeling female.’”

READ FULL

Connecting The Dots, Education

Military deployed to protect Paris Businesses against Yellow Vest protests

Many targets by the movement in Paris and other cities included known landmarks and stores or places seen as elitist, such as the Parisian restaurant Le Fouquet’s on the Champs Elysées.

Now, they will be dedicated to ensuring security at the next round of Yellow Vest demonstrations, which have been held every Saturday for the past 18 weeks.

But last week’s demonstrations, which some Yellow Vest leaders had suggested may be their last, turned into some of the most violent to date.

After the weekend, the French government sacked the top police official in Paris, 66-year-old Michel Delpuech, for failure to keep the protests in the capital from spiralling out of control.

Damage done

In addition to the landmark restaurant in Paris, more than 100 other businesses were damaged along the Champs-Elysées.

Major cities dealing from the movement include Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Nantes and Nice, to name a few.

On Sunday, China’s President Xi Jinping will start his visit to France with a stop in Côte d’Azur beginning with Nice and Monaco.

For the upcoming protest this week, which will mark the 19th week, calls on social media have singled out Nice, Toulouse and Montpellier.

Read Full

Random Events, Free Will, Pre-destiny or Something Darker ?